Tea at Trianon: Mark Twain and the Confederacy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Mark Twain and the Confederacy

From The Collector:

Samuel Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, a tiny village in the northern part of the state. His family moved from Tennessee before Samuel’s birth, and his father, John Marshall Clemens, soon relocated the family again to Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. His father pursued several entrepreneurial ventures there, including shopkeeping and slave trading. These efforts failed, and the family relied on money sent home from Samuel’s older brother, Orion, who worked as a newspaper printer.

Samuel mirrored his brother’s career, leaving home in 1853 and finding employment as a typesetter in various cities. In 1854, Clemens joined a group armed to dispel rioters in St. Louis. Samuel’s band marched to the scene, but as they drew closer, he asked his friend to hold his musket while he fell out to get a drink. He did not return. This suggests a natural aversion to violence and a pretext for his wartime desertion. After forays across the country, he returned to Hannibal in 1857 and became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. This experience influenced his future pen name, “Mark Twain,” a call signifying the river was deep enough in that spot for safe passage. (Read more.)